Friends and partners -  

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This is our first annual letter, and I will keep it short. Over the last 36 months we have grown Enduring Companies from concept into reality with the help of many of you, for which I am very grateful. Thank you. 

 

As you may recall, our mission is to “build to last.” We are an investment holding company and strive to grow companies, partnerships, and people for long term success. We pride ourselves on our intellectual honesty, patience, courage, work ethic and creativity. We operate based on three core principles: be a good partner, act like an owner, and relentlessly pursue better. In practice, we invest in small, private operating companies with a long-term view. We believe that entrepreneurial small businesses are the backbone of our country, and we are very honored and proud to be trusted as partners in stewarding these Enduring Companies.  

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I consider our work a long-term journey, and our first steps up the mountain have been in the right direction. We have made 3 investments with strong results. We have generated high cash flow yields to our equity dollars with no or minimal debt and been able to either re-invest this cash at high returns on reinvested capital or maintained the discipline to distribute those dollars when we did not believe this was possible. More importantly, we have done this in a manner that is highly aligned with our partners and our values, which has already resulted in partnerships with high quality people that we expect will endure and flourish. 

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Our most recent investment closed at the end of November and marked the first time we brought in additional equity partners to participate meaningfully alongside our capital. We were fortunate to have significantly more interest than available equity and believe that increasingly (and not surprisingly) in this environment good opportunities are the limiting constraint. For us, this means we need to kiss more frogs and make sure we keep our underwriting hurdle high. Maintaining this discipline has admittedly not been easy given how lucrative the buy and flip model has been in what seems to be a market of ever-expanding multiples and risk-seeking capital. We have found that prioritizing partners who value our approach and investing a meaningful amount of our own cash in each opportunity helps us tether ourselves to the mast and focus on opportunities that are the right fit for us. We are optimistic that this will help us continue to navigate not only this market successfully, but also future environments which may differ significantly.  

 

I am thrilled to continue charging up the mountain and believe we have an exciting opportunity to build something significant. Thank you for your interest, support and partnership. I look forward to what the future holds, onward and upward!

 

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Jory Caulkins
CEO
Enduring Companies LLC

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